VoucherBin is a great website that lists over 20,000 vouchers, coupons and sale links for thousands of stores. Easy to navigate, you can either load the home page with the most recent vouchers, or you can search by retailer or category. The website even lets you know the expiry date of the vouchers. Alongside this, you can also sign up to receive vouchers directly to your inbox. Retailers on VoucherBin include Wallis, Zavvi, Disney Store, Ugg store, Simply Be, H Samuel and many more. I am even keeping an eye on the Walt Disney Travel Company deals and vouchers for our honeymoon next year.

Click here to find out more about VoucherBin. You can also follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook.

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Don’t you just love it when you have to ring your bank, from your mobile, and they’ve only got an 0845 number? Of course you could look up another number online, but sometimes that isn’t convenient.

If you just turn over your bank card or even your credit card, you’ll see a (usually 0845) number to ring, but next to that is the ‘calling internationally’ number – and this is a normal landline telephone number to ring. It gets you to the same switchboard as the 0845 number, but the landline number is included in your free minutes, whereas an 0845 number isn’t.

So next time you’re putting off ringing your bank because you haven’t found a cheap number to ring, just turn your card over! This also applies to credit card companies and sometimes even your mobile phone provider.

Knowing how much money to take to Florida can be a minefield, and I don’t think that there is one set answer for this. I set aside £1,500 (about $2,300) when I went in 2012 but I did buy myself an iPhone and had about £300 left over. I go absolutely mad with shopping when I’m over there – I literally wait for my trip to Florida to stock up on my favourite make up (MAC at the outlets), Converse (which I always end up selling despite trying to convince myself that I am a Converse kinda girl), Wilton baking supplies, random crap from Dollar Tree, so many sweets and much (much, much, much more). I bring two suitcases home. When I went with Tony last year, we both brought two suitcases home as we’d been buying a lot of wedding things.

Parking at the theme parks runs at $14-$15 per day (around £10). If you visit two theme parks from the same company on the same day (two Disney parks, two Universal parks, etc) then your parking is transferable. Some of the theme parks let you park for free from around 5pm, although this really is hit and miss and won’t apply to Magic Kingdom. If you’re staying at that resort then you get free parking for your stay.

Eating out can be done for as little or as much as you want. A great money saving tip is to fill up at a breakfast buffet in the mornings, and these generally keep you going until dinner (dinner being the evening meal in this case), with perhaps an ice cream or something to tide you over. You can also take snacks with you into the parks, and if you’re very prepared, you can even pack a full on picnic to leave in a cooler box in your car. You can also sign up to restaurant’s mailing lists (here’s a handy list for you to sign up to) before your departure and they will come with money off coupons. And there’s free coupons in the weekly paper (Orlando Sentinel).

Another great money saving tip is to buy water, Caprisun and bottles of Coke from the supermarkets and keep them in a cooler box in the car. Getting back to the car in the sweltering heat and having a frozen or cool drink waiting for you is amazing. You can of course take a drink with you into the park, but I found that mine became warm quite quickly.

Contradicting what I said earlier, having a large meal at lunch time will also save you money as restaurants generally offer a cheaper menu at lunch time. We’ve also found that places will offer “Happy Hour” buy one get one free on alcoholic drinks, lasting between 1pm-7pm. That’s some happy hour!

You can also grab an Orlando Eat Play card for £12, which gives you many discounts in participating restaurants. This year will be the first time using one, and it even covers McDonald’s!

As for how to take the money, I can strongly recommend the FairFX currency card. It costs £9.95 when you sign up, but if you sign up via this link IT IS FREE when you top up with £50. The currency card is a prepaid card, and the rate you get is whatever it is the day you top up. So if you’re going in awhile, you can check the rates daily and top up then. Today is has been $1.69 per £1 – when we went last year it was just $1.52 per £1. FairFX also offers a better rate than in store cash exchange, and you have the added protection as it is a MasterCard. The minimum top up amount is £50, and the maximum in one go is £2,500. You can check your balance online and using their mobile app, and too up straight away if you need to. As many places have wifi, if you don’t have enough money on your card you can just top it up easily before making your next purchase.

There is a $2 charge for withdrawing cash – I usually get anything from $200-$500 in cash (from a currency exchange) before I go away, and put the rest on the FairFX card.

If there is money left over on the card when you get back, you can do one of three things:

1. Leave it on there for your next visit
2. Spend it in stores over here – there is a 1.4% out of currency fee. If you withdraw it from an ATM there’s also the $2 withdrawal fee.
3. Pay £10 to FairFX to get the money put back into your bank.

I do a combination of 1 and 2, depending on when my next visit is.

The FairFX currency card is also available as a Euro currency card.

We did run into a problem with the FairFX card not working in Red Lobster, and when we asked online, no one else had that problem in Red Lobster – but this is where your back up cash comes in useful.

I would suggest a food budget of at least $100 a day for a couple, but if needs be, you could get away with a lot less.

A few weeks ago I came up with the idea of withdrawing our weekly household money in cash and then physically putting aside whatever is left over after a week into an envelope. The money left over would go straight into our Florida fund. With 15 weeks to go when I started, I thought every little bit that we could save would help. Our budget is quite generous, especially for thriftsters, at £65 a week to cover our food, cleaning products, meals out, additional entertainment and takeaways. Our groceries come in at around £25-£35 a week, leaving as much as £30 left over for top up shops, meals out, takeaways and even pesky parking charges when we go to the cinema.

Since dealing in cash only, I’ve found my spending has dropped. A small top up shop on a debit card ends up being around £10, whereas with cash, if we’re going to buy bread, we buy bread, because handing over £1 (or 10p if I’ve managed to get it from the cheap shelf) is a heck of a lot easier than handing over £10 on junk we don’t need. I’ve also looked at ways of getting our meals out cheaper – either by not going, mystery shopping or using vouchers. Instead of a sit down meal every week, we might opt for a cheaper Subway – £10 for 2 foot long subs and a drink is really good value.  Another great side effect of running this challenge means that I’m actively looking through our food supplies to see what we can use up – the freezers have never been so empty, and yet there’s still probably weeks worth of food in them, once you start getting creative.

After four weeks we have managed to save £41.43 – an average of £10.35 a week! Imagine if we did this for an entire year, it would be £538.59. It should hopefully give us an extra £155.36 for our trip to Florida if we manage to keep saving at this rate.

I find that cash works better for me, but there’s no reason why you can’t apply the same idea to your bank account. Just set up a different account (e-savings accounts are the easiest to set up) and transfer any saved money over each week. I found that when we were using our debit cards to buy groceries, we’d often go over our budget because we didn’t have a physical reminder of how much we had left to spend. And of course, you can make your savings more glamorous than my A4 white envelope with “Florida savings” written on the front – a nice piggy bank would make a great alternative.

Having something to look forward to definitely helps in that moment of weakness whilst in store. I try to covert whatever I’m considering buying into something in Florida – if it is a bottle of coke, I think about how much nicer it’ll be to have a frozen coke slushie in Florida! If it is a meal out that we’re debating, we decide if we’d rather go out that night, or The Cheesecake Factory in September. Of course, that’s pretty extreme thinking, but as I mentioned, our budgets are already stretched very thin, so it is a case of every penny counts.

Do you prefer to use cash or cards? Which one helps you to save more?

My future sister in law is a self confessed chocaholic. So when it was her birthday a few months ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to make for her – a chocolate bouquet. Not only was it fun to make, but it was a really thrifty gift.

I started off with a selection of chocolate, ribbons, tissue paper, kebab sticks, and old jar, cellotape and some flower oasis.

I cut the flower oasis (over a bin!) so that it fit into the jar easily – then about another 0.5cm all around to make space for the tissue paper to hide the oasis

Making the chocolates “stand up” is really simple – it just takes some cellotape and kebab sticks.

I arranged them in something that looked half decent…..

And tied a ribbon around the jar – all done. I do, however, need to go to bow tying school.

And there you have it – a really fun gift that takes less than 30 minutes to put together. If you don’t have any oasis, you can use a cut up pool noodle or left over polystyrene.

Continuing on our saving money on your trip to Florida theme, today we’re talking about theme parks. Apart from the flights, visiting theme parks in Orlando can be the most expensive part. There isn’t really a way around this. Either you go to the parks or you don’t. But it can get extremely confusing. Sorry if you’re reading this and you already know, but for total beginners, here goes.

There are three park companies – Disney has a total of four theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and EPCOT); Universal has two (Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure) and Seaworld has 3 (Discovery Cove, Seaworld and Busch Gardens). On top of this there are also two Disney water parks (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon), Seaworld has one (Aquatica) and Universal have one (Wet ‘n Wild). Still with me? Great.

The theme parks that you visit will depend on your interests, who you’re traveling with and the length of your holiday. As we’re only going for a week this time, and staying on Disney property next year for our honeymoon, we will just be doing Seaworld, Busch Gardens and Aquatica. The Disney parks may appeal to you, or you may like to do all of the parks.

Once you’ve decided which theme parks take your fancy then you’ve got to find the tickets. You can buy your tickets in three different ways.

1. Direct at the theme parks on the day of your visit. If you’re only planning on visiting one park for one day then this is a cost effective way, but if you’re planning more than one visit to each company’s parks then this is the most expensive option. This also eats into your visit as the queues at the start of the day can be really long.

2. Online with a US based company. They have different tickets to the UK tickets, and one of the main features is Disney’s Magic Your Way, where you can pretty much customise your tickets to suit your needs, including park hopping, a set number of days, etc. I’ve found this to be extremely confusing and would mean having my days planned well in advance.

3. Online with a UK based company. This is how I go about purchasing tickets as you get different tariffs than the US based companies. My favourite being the 7, 14 or 21 day ultimate Disney tickets, which include all 4 theme parks, both water parks and now includes a round of crazy gold every day if you so wish to partake! You can also get 14 day Universal tickets for both the parks and 14 day Seaworld tickets for 2 or 3 parks (depending on whether you want to do Discovery Cove or not). This means that your holiday can have some spontaneity to it, and if there’s a park you’re almost passing you can just pop in for your favourite ride or show. It also means that you can do half days at the parks without feeling guilty about having paid for a full day.

A 14 day Disney ticket for 2014 costs  £260, making it just £18.50 a day if you visit every day. For comparison, a ticket to Alton Towers is £42 online. I’ve mentioned Florida Escapes above, and I cannot praise them enough. After extensive research they have been the cheapest company to book my theme park tickets with for three years running. Granted that at times it has only been by £5 or so, but they don’t charge postage (or a credit card transaction fee). They’re also really great if you have any questions or any problems. The staff have always been friendly both online and over the phone. They’re also ATOL protected.

If you’ve missed any of the series so far, we’ve discussed saving money on your flights and how to save on accommodation in Orlando.

I love getting a great deal, and we’ve found that one of the best ways to keep our food shopping spending down is to visit the yellow label shelf. Every day, supermarkets reduce items that are either discontinued, damaged or going out of date soon. Visiting the reduced shelves can yield anything and everything, so I make it a habit to go regularly. I could reel off a long list of my best bargains, but you just need to take a scroll through my Instagram to see how much we save by purchasing reduced items.

When looking through the cheap shelf, look for items that can be frozen easily (milk, bread, cheese and meat are prime examples), as well as things that can be used up straight away – squishy fruit can be used to cook, bake or make jam with. Vegetables don’t automatically go bad once the clock strikes midnight on their best before date – I’ve bought a 10p bag of carrots two months ago, and there are still some in our fridge now. There are also loads of ways that you can freeze potatoes, I’ve even dedicated an entire Pinterest board to it.

Each store will have their own system – we’ve got a Co-op just a 3 minute walk away, and if I visit every night around 7pm then I’m sure to find something for 10p on the reduced shelf. There’s always bread reduced to 10p (and bread freezes well), and usually there are potatoes, mushrooms, yoghurts and freshly baked baguettes. And there are usually different reduced sections dotted around the store. Our local Sainsbury’s is very good for damaged boxes of cereal being half price or cheaper. The damage is only to the cardboard box, and the packet inside remains sealed and undamaged.

Another great thing about supermarket reduced shelves is that you might find yourself trying new things that you’ve never looked at before. I’ve recently discovered some delicious peri peri sausages, which at £2 for 4, I wouldn’t normally even consider. However, they were reduced to 50p. It also means that sometimes we can eat above what our monthly budget allows – allowing us to get finest cuts of steak for a fraction of the usual cost. It also inspires me to come up with new meal plans based around what I’ve found reduced.

Top tips for getting a bargain at the reduced shelves:

• Find out the best times for visiting the supermarket to maximise reduced bargains. This varies between stores.
• Make sure the items you want to buy are actually decent – there’s no point buying something reduced if you have to throw it out once you get home. If one tomato in a pack is rotten then you can wash the rest. But if all but one of the tomatoes are rotten, is it really worth it?
• Make sure you’re actually getting a bargain. Something may be reduced from £6 to £3, but if it is currently on offer elsewhere in the store for £3, you’re better off getting a newer or undamaged one. If you do spot something like this, you can always point out the discrepancy to a member of staff and they may make a further reduction on the item.
• Do you actually need it, and can you think of a use for it? Again, there is no point buying something because it is cheap and then having to throw it out because you haven’t been able to use it.
• If you are really gutsy (aka me!) and you see a member of staff making final reductions then go ahead and ask them what they’re doing! A lot of the time they’re happy to tell you what they’re doing and ask if there is anything on the shelf (or even in your trolley) that you’d like to be marked down to the final reductions.
• Look for items on multibuy offers. Sometimes, not always, the till will automatically take off the multibuy offer – this is how I was paid to take yoghurt away.

I find it a challenge every month to see what I can get reduced and to see how much money I can save. Are you a “yellow label” shopper? Let me know some of the best deals you’ve found! If you post them to Instagram or Twitter and I’m not currently following you then let me know and I’ll rectify that straight away!

Now that you’ve booked your flights, you’re going to want to look for somewhere to stay. On my previous trips to Orlando, I’ve always opted to stay in a villa – mostly because I went for over 20 days each time. This year we’re branching out and staying in a hotel, as we want to be closer to the theme parks, and it’s only a week, so a hotel works out cheaper.

You can choose to stay “on site”, which is a theme park’s hotel, or stay off site. Being on site costs a lot more, but you can enjoy perks such as longer park hours and free parking within the parks. Staying off site will save a lot of money and you can still get just as nice accommodation.

Villa pros:

• Great for larger parties.
• Private swimming pool.
• Kitchen facilities mean you can save on eating out.
• There are villas to fit every budget – you can find a villa from £350 upwards.

Villa cons/things to consider

• If you’re traveling between September and April you’ll want to add pool heating, which often comes with a surcharge.
• You will need a hire car.
• You may be slightly further away from the parks. This hasn’t been an issue for us before, as we’ve driven, and it takes 30 minutes from leaving the villa to pulling into a Disney car park, but we’re looking forward to being closer this year.
• Lack of housekeeping – you’re in charge of clearing up after yourself.

Hotel pros:

• More facilities.
• You can get away without hiring a car, especially if your hotel offers shuttle buses to the theme parks.
• Daily housekeeping.

Hotel cons/things to consider:

• Most, if not all, hotels in Orlando add a daily resort fee per room. This can be anything from $2-$30. This will be listed when you book the hotel, in the fine print, or you can Google the name of the hotel and “resort fee” to find out what it is.
• You will need to tip housekeeping daily (typically $1-$2)

 Saving money on villas

• Book with the villa owner direct. My favourite place to look for villas is DIBB. You can either post your villa requirements, search for villas or even search through special offers for villa owners with particular dates to fill.

Saving money on hotels

If you’re looking to book a hotel then I can strongly recommend booking through Hotels.com. Firstly, there’s currently 8% cash back on hotel bookings – so for every £100 you spend on a hotel booking you’ll receive £8 back through Quidco. In additional, Hotels.com run a loyalty scheme where for every 10 nights you rack up (not just 10 nights in a row) then you get a night for free! This is in addition to the great prices – I’ve always found Hotels.com to be the cheapest.

You can also book a “secret hotel” for a cheaper rate. A secret hotel is where a company like Expedia offer you a “secret” hotel for a cheaper rate. You can find out the location of the so called secret hotel by finding out whatever information you can from the website (such as amenities and trip advisor reviews) and with a little detective work (otherwise known as copying and pasting into Google), you can find out the name of the hotel before you book.

Another great way to get a bargain on a hotel is to “name your price”. Priceline offers you just that – you can bid each day to see if your lowest offer is accepted. It is important to remember that your bid is binding, and if it is accepted then you’ve booked that hotel. Priceline doesn’t tell you the names of the hotels, but you can make a fairly good estimate on which hotel(s) they are, by narrowing down the location and the amenities on offer.

There’s always plenty of accommodation in Orlando, so don’t stress yourself out too much worrying about hotels selling out. A lot of the hotels and villas are mirror images of each other, so if your perfect accommodation is not available to you then you’re sure to find something else.

It’s no secret that I love Orlando, Florida. It’s where Tony proposed, it’s where I’ve been on holiday for the past 3 years and it’s where we definitely want our honeymoon (with a few upgrades!). I knew that realistically, we couldn’t afford to go to Florida again this year, and we’d have to wait for our honeymoon next year. This upset me more than I am willing to admit, so I’m really excited that we’ve managed to grab an absolute bargain for a week away in Florida later this year. I thought this would be the perfect time to bring you a series of blog posts talking about how to save money on a trip to Florida.

People often think that going to Orlando is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. You can do Orlando on almost any budget, and during this series I’ll be providing you information on how to get the best value and decide whether you can afford a holiday there.

Before you do anything, make sure that you’ve signed up to a cash back website – where you’re paid for purchasing something through a link they provide. I’d recommend signing up to Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese.

You’ve got two options when looking at your flight – you can look for a package holiday which includes your flight, hotel and often airport transfers, or you can “DIY” and book them all separately. This is now my fourth time going to Orlando, and each time it has worked out cheaper to DIY and book everything myself.

If you want to look at booking your flights and hotel together, I can strongly recommend Low Cost Holidays, ebookers and Tesco Compare Holidays.

Getting your flight can be the trickiest bit – everything else can fall in to place later, but you need a flight, and you need to book before they’re sold out. If there are very set dates that you must travel (school holidays, annual leave, etc) then you’ll want to get your flights booked ASAP, before prices increase or seats sell out. If you’re free to book your holiday any time then you’ll have more options when booking your flights, and more chance of getting a great deal.

You can fly direct to Orlando International Airport, or Sanford airport (still in Orlando), or you can fly indirect. I’ve flown both direct and indirect, and honestly, they both have their pros.

Direct:

• Gets you to Orlando faster

• Less time spent travelling

Indirect:

• Clear immigration elsewhere in America – saving you lots of time at Orlando

• Saves you from £100 upwards as opposed to flying direct

Start pricing your flights using various sites – I like to look at Last minute and Skyscanner – I find that Lastminute is generally more up to date than Skyscanner, as they had the Virgin Atlantic sales prices listed, whereas Skyscanner were listing Virgin Atalantic flights for double the price. There’s also Kayak and Google flights. Keep an eye on how the flight prices fluctuate, and you’ll get a feeling of when is a good time to book. When looking at the prices, make sure that baggage is included. It is included with Delta, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, but Monarch charge £43 for a bag. I have never paid more than £500 for a flight, including the credit card fee.

If your dates are flexible then be sure to check the prices for different dates. We saved over £150 each by flying back home a day later than we originally planned. Airlines often have sales too – especially at Christmas and Easter. That’s how we managed to bag direct flights with Virgin for £438.99.

When you are ready to book, be sure to go through the cash back websites (Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese) before purchasing your flights, so that you can get a little bit of money back on the purchase.

Once you’ve purchased your flights, be sure to sign up to the airline’s loyalty scheme. These schemes award you air miles every time that you fly. Even if you’re not planning on flying for awhile, and even though you may not fly with the same airline, you may as well rack up the air miles whilst you can.

Up until leasing a car last month, fuel has been my biggest expense – even more than my half of the rent! I’m always looking for ways to save on fuel, so I’m actually a little excited to tell you about this deal.

Topcashback have this brilliant service Snap & Save, where you can upload a photograph of your shopping receipts and get cash back on certain products. You can use their smartphone app or upload from the website. Starting from today (20th May at 10.00) and running until 23.59 on Sunday 25 May 2014, if you buy at least £10 of fuel from any of the petrol stations below and upload your receipt, you’ll get £2 cash back.

You must sign up through this link to get the £2 off fuel. So that’s £8 for £10 worth of fuel! You can, of course, buy more, but you must spend at least £10 on fuel. This is available to the first 5,000 people to submit their receipts.

The filling stations included are:

• Tesco
• Morrisons
• Sainsbury’s
• Asda
• The Co-Operative
• Esso
• BP
• Texaco
• Gulf
• Total
• Jet
• Murco
• Shell

Click here to get started.